For entrepreneurs, overcoming work life challenges is key to success

International Women’s Day is here. Like every year, this year too, March 8 will witness a rousing debate on women making a killing at home front and work sphere. However look around and you will find thousands of women who are already creating a niche for themselves quietly and steadily. For these women and their supporters, every day is a Women’s Day.

We salute such women and feature their achievements, opinions, career advice in our ‘Women’s Day 2017’showcase.

This edition has Aakanksha Bhargava, CEO, P M Relocations Pvt. Ltd sharing tips for budding entrepreneurs from her own experiences. Here’s her account –“In today’s digitally-dominated work culture the new emerging generation of entrepreneurs and employees are struggling to overcome work life challenges and strike the perfect work/life balance.

Our constant 24×7 work culture simply mean that work for us never really stops. For many of us, work is what purely defines us and that means that we are constantly on a look out for meeting potential business contacts on holidays, strike new partnerships where we go out to eat and end up with our college mates and friends as our business partners.

Gone are the days where work could be defined by a 9 to 5 time schedule. As new businesses aggressively expand to overseas boundaries and people inhabit their work lifestyle and timings; achieving a sweet spot between career satisfaction, mental sanity, family time, pursuing new hobbies and social fulfilment seems like a distant dream. Overcoming the challenge of ‘Balancing Work’ is one of the biggest issues we face today, and it is something which not only affects an individual but also extends to family members and friends.

Initially when I started my journey, I found my passion in the idea of ‘Being able to transform the lives of other by offering stress-free end to end moving solutions’. There was a lot in this industry which hadn’t been tapped by anyone earlier. The industry was still in its nascent stage and needed an in-depth introduction to anyone we met hence I felt the need to tell people that moving can be made simpler with the right solutions.

The relocation industry in India is unconventional, unexplored and unknown hence the biggest challenge was to source people. Not many wanted to explore the option of working in this industry due to lack of awareness. Another challenge was altering the attitude of people towards their ‘JOB’. Majority of the times people just clock in and out of the office, and maybe if they are lucky they will learn a thing or two along the way. They ideally are not willing to overcome challenges and achieve higher in life.

Over this period, I had to lead by example at all levels right from selling to building the brand, to keep upgrading the processes and systems with increasing work and manpower, setting up a professional culture with changing their attitude and most importantly all of this had to be done in budget since we have not been funded by anyone. The business demands a lot of working capital whereas we work on credit; hence balancing the same was a challenge. It was difficult to work in the industry but as long as you have the courage and are ready to take up the challenges, you can get it all done!

Being at a crucial top-management level, I strongly believe in supporting our employees in overall career growth and development. Not only do we focus on targeted work performances but we also encourage them to effectively follow a disciplined work-life balance. Since work in our industry demands constant hard work and attention hence as a company we offer telecommuting and flexi-timing arrangements to our employees giving them the much-needed time effectively balance their work and personal life. With continued hard-work we have been successful to an extent that people have started looking beyond the idea of calling local truckers and labourers to shift their homes.

Today, people reach out to professionals to move their belongings. I think what worked for us as a team was “Having the right Intent!!”. I feel, “It is just about the strength of one’s mind and having faith in the intent of your heart that makes one achieve higher in life. But I can bet one thing for sure that when one eventually does decides on something their courage will kick-ass the fear they held all this while!! One just needs to take the plunge and then see the miracles of life.”